In Search of Ecopaganism 5

...the Sixties happened! For me, the Sixties began with the Coming of the Beatles in early 1964. But 1962 was the year of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and 1963 was the year Kennedy was assassinated, but pick your own heralds of the new zeitgeist. I would date 'the Sixties' as a countercultural era as roughly from the early 1960s into the early 1970s.

I can't remember much specifically about Indians from the actual 1960s, though, apart from the kind of TV shows and movies I have described. But notable in my 60s spiritual chronology was when I closed the door on Christianity when I was 12 or 13. I had doubts about what I was being told in Sunday-school and I more or less read the whole Bible to try to see if I could believe. But the whole book shocked and revulsed me, and I had an unpleasant waking dream of grim Jehovah up in the sky. That was it. Then I discovered the Romance of Eastern spirituality in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and was carried away. When the paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings came out mid-60s, I found a literary realm in which my feeling for Nature was reflected. I tried to live in Middle Earth. There was a strong environmentalist element in the story, though not really ecological, unfortunately, but as Margot Adler points out, 'ecology' was unknown until Earth Day 1970. But as with Hindu mysticism, I was once again awakened and sent off in a new direction.

After Silent Spring had come out and awakened the world to the environmental threat to Nature, there was more and more in the news about 'the environment' being polluted and destroyed, and a series of environmental books by Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Rene Dubos, William O. Douglas, and others came out over the decade, seeking to turn the tide against destruction. In this, American Indians figured as an example of a people who lived without harm to Nature before the White Man came and ruined it all. Everyone alive then should remember the famous 'crying Indian commercial', in which a mature Indian in a canoe looks on at different scenes of industrial defacement and pollution and public littering, and at the end, we see a tear rolling down his face. It was very moving, and an amazingly effective graphic means of waking people up to what we were doing, exploiting that well-worn image of the Indian as the Noble Redskin. But by that time, I had graduated from J. R. R. Tolkien to D. H. Lawrence, who featured Indians in some of his works, but it was mainly the Nature-mysticism that affected me, and the 'blood-consciousness' of his characters. He had been affected by the Indians and their landscape at Taos, New Mexico, but as far as I can tell, he got his ideology from the German counterculture at first or second-hand.

When I hit college in the fall of 1969, I started reading about American history as it concerned attitudes toward and treatment of Nature, and learned much about the Indians, as well as about Thoreau and John Muir and other Nature-mystic/prophets. The first Earth Day came the next spring, and I was told about it by a biology major, and attended the ceremony out near the middle of campus where the flagpole was, but there wasn't a big turn-out, probably because there was so much anti-war turmoil going on at the time, and it seemed that most of the people there were from the Biology department (it figures). There were statements made, but it wasn't a big, showy spectacle. I can't now remember the event very well-- was the new ecology flag raised up the flagpole? I was, as usual, an observer rather than a participant-- I never got a buzz being in a crowd or attending a ceremony, and Earth Day didn't strike me then as a major event, even though I was very 'environmentally concerned'. There was so much else going on-- it was a mad scene, and I was confused and freaked-out by it all. But as it turned out, Earth Day was a major event.

I think it was after this, maybe the next year, that 'the Indian' finally appeared. A bus-caravan of American Indians arrived on campus calling themselves The White Roots of Peace. Margot Adler mentions them in Drawing Down the Moon, saying that they toured from northern Canada to southern Florida. Once again, my memory is foggy, but what most impressed me was the older Indian man, in the traditional get-up, who reminded me of the 'medicine man' I had seen on TV shows and in movies, and of the 'Crying Indian', and I was greatly affected by his message of peace among men and with Nature, as well as astounded by all the young Indians with him. I had actually never seen a real, live Indian before*, this being the East, and it was like seeing Robin Hood or King Arthur stepping out of the world of legend into the real world. Once again, I was very shy and bystanding, but then I dropped by the room of the girl who had urged me to attend the Earth Day observance, and she gushed at me, "I'm in love!" Soon there appeared a young Indian in his get-up, not very tall, but well-set-up and very attractive, with hair like a black, shining pelt. Really, the most striking human figure I had yet seen in my life ('the gods walk among us'). Of course, I was socially paralyzed in his presence, but it was enough to have encountered him. And for a while, the effect of the White Roots of Peace lingered like an afterglow, but with so much late-60s turmoil going on, without and within, it, too, faded.

*No, that's not true-- as a kid, I went to a classmate's house after school, and his mother was Indian and was making fried eggplant which she said was an Indian dish, and she gave me some to eat. But I never went back there, being the autistic type, clueless and passive about social relations, totally inept at friendship.

In Search of Ecopaganism 4

This is about early influences that shaped my image of 'the Noble Redskin'. We're all formed by early influences, though our responses to our physical/cultural environment is selective, idiosyncratic. I am of the post-WWII Baby Boom generation, the first TV generation. As a tot, I would sit entranced before the Tube (literally in-tranced), fascinated by the gray-toned imagery made up of dancing dots, oblivious to its sense. McLuhan may have been right--'the medium is the message (massage)'. TV was futurist ghost-world, made by the god behind the machine, a coercive stream of alien scenes and sounds you're helpless to field, so you trance-out. Fortunately, that strategy worked-- my fragile psyche was not overwhelmed, but it was insidiously, relentlessly programmed in ways I still can't entirely grasp. We're all programmed, early on, and there's not a lot we can do about it-- it's become 'us'. All we can do is try to override the stuff we deem bad or wrong, and will the better.

There was children's literature as well. The more affecting of it was in fairy tales, which had some numinosity about them, were meant to enchant. Do mothers know what they're doing to their child's soul, reading them these stories as they grow drowsy? And television did much the same, in similar relaxed conditions. Well, children want magic, wonder, adventure, marvelous places, amazing persons, more than reality could ever provide. This sets us up to be cruelly disappointed by reality contrasting with our programmed shining ideals and yearnings that won't go away.

Of the amazing persons I can recall, it was televised versions of Robin Hood, Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Superman that had the strongest effect early on. Robin Hood as played by Richard Greene and Davy Crockett by Fess Parker have endured as icons in my psyche. Both were heroic men of the forest-- one in medieval England, the other in frontier America, which might have something to do with the counter-pulls of English and American cultures I've always experienced. There were Indians in Disney's Davy Crockett episodes, and in other Disney serials, on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Show. In the 1950s and into the 60s, westerns were everywhere in profusion, on evening television, in movies. Back then, we were closer to the 'heroic' era, and in literature, mostly pulp, and from the earliest movies, the western had been a major genre. As a kid watching TV, I saw a lot of back-lot frontier towns and California desert and hills. I never liked desert, but the rugged forested hills and mountains made a romantic imprint. Fortunately, our apartment development was surrounded by woods, cliffs, a meadow with stream, that I'm now grateful I had as an early influence, to complement that of Nature on TV!

Particularly affecting fare was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, both of which had Indians, with Tonto as the Lone Ranger's 'faithful sidekick' probably then the most salient Indian in the world reached by American television. Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels, was dignified, intelligent-- though laconic, with Basic English only-- sort of a wooden, cigar-store Indian stereotype. But he was part of a heroic duo, though secondary. We had after-school B-movies on TV, some of which were westerns, some of the cowboys-and-Indians sort. There was also, for kids, Rin Tin Tin (a German shepherd) at Fort Apache, which was a stockaded fortress against savage Indians. So there was that stereotype, but over my early years, there were many positive presentations of Indians as noble, dignified, intelligent, and wise. 'Squaws' were invariably demure, modestly dressed, respectable helpmeets, but that was how respectable 'white' frontier women were presented, too-- it was the 50s' conservative ideal of womanhood. There was also the wise old Medicine Man-- always presented respectfully. I suppose he was my first acquaintance with that archetype-- Merlin came much later. The Indian regalia-- peace pipe, eagle feathers, headdresses down to there, fringed buckskin clothing with leggings and loincloths and armbands and headbands, painted shields, bows and arrows (like Robin Hood!), teepees, canoes, cayuses (horses)-- all of that, and the natural settings, were deeply imprinted on me. At the time, there was nothing else so romantically affecting, apart from fairy stories, which induced powerful romantic dream-states, but this was filmed, and shown on television!

As a kid, I of course had no way to separate this Hollywood fantasy from reality-- I didn't know the reality! It wasn't until later (covered in next shtook) that I began learning of the terrible things done by the White Man to the Indians. Even in school, we got mostly the Thanksgiving story and Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head bashed-in with a war-club by appealing to her father, the stern chief Powhatan. And there was plenty about Indian attacks, kidnappings, disappearances (Roanoke Colony, for one).

But despite a glut of depictions of Indians as ruthless, relentless evil-doers, renegades, we didn't get the drunken, stupid Indian stereotype. And there was much that was valorizing, increasingly so-- but that had been around since the silent-movie era. We saw it all on B-movies, mostly from the 1940s, I think.

As for Indian religion, we got the wise elder on the cliff-top communing with, appealing to, the Great Spirit in the sky, with peace pipe, perhaps. Not incompatible with Christianity, as far as it went, and the only alternative to it available at the time, on TV-- that's important.

I never liked violence, except as sheer action, and so the western-town saloon brawling and gunfights out on the main street didn't appeal to me, nor the ferocious Indian attacks on innocent settlers, with valiant cavalry vanquishing them in the end. It was the numinous, romantic feelings of wilderness and the native inhabitants of it that made the deepest impression-- it meant something-- something good-- in a time, as I saw later, of rocket-like blasting into a shining modern Future (or maybe not), while we strove to free ourselves of the terrible Evil that afflicted the world (the Nazis, the Commies, the Nukes). Then something happened...

The Celtic Horned or Ram-headed Snake Was Really a Slug or Snail ?

I always wondered where this Celtic creature came from. It's mainly known from the Gundestrup cauldron, associated with what may be Cernunnos, the Horned God. Is it related to the germanic 'wyrm'?-- a large serpent or dragon without wings, as I've read the old Celtic dragon was. A few things I've come across lately gave me the idea that the horned/ram-headed snake was actually a slug or snail, at least originally. First, the Celtic snake is associated with healing springs and wells. But springs and wells are where slugs and snails are found because of the moisture and slimy growth to feed on. As for snakes, I don't know if they hang out around them. Slugs do look rather snake-like.* And slugs/snails sometimes have eye-stalks, if that's what they are, that look like horns. Also, there's a Celtic charm called a 'snake stone' which is an ammonite-shell fossil-- a snail shell-- but it is said to resemble a coiled-up snake, which gives it its efficacy-- snakes being magical. It's an odd juxtaposition of snake and snail, but does that imply anything more? Where the ram's head comes in could be the snail shell, which resembles a ram's coiled horns. A snail's shell might also be seen as an opening from the Otherworld-- which is why the Celtic spiral (actually pre-Celtic) was used so much? (or it's a coiled-up snake!).

Well, this is all speculation, but it makes you wonder how far back might this creature go. Is it pan-Indo-European? The Hindu snake is also associated with water and wells. As the Naga, a demon-god, it might even be the original of the Chinese dragon, which is water-loving. The Vedic demon-god Vritra was a hoarder of water. Forms of the Scandinavian wyrm were associated with water, too. The horned/ram-headed snake could even be pre-Indo-European/pan-Eurasian. It's a shame we don't know more about it. We can always improvise, though!

* It's possible that in ancient times, snakes, snails, and slugs were grouped together. In germanic languages, snake and snail are related etymologically-- snail being a diminutive of snake, says one etymological dictionary, at least in Old English. Slug is not related, though. In Irish, snail is snag-- rather like snake. But the word for snake is nathair-- oh well. In Welsh the two words are not etymologically related. Snake derives from Indo-European *(s)neg-os (= to creep), as probably does Sanscrit Nagas.

In Search of Ecopaganism 4

Western culture has been interested in 'the Noble Savage' about as long as it has been interested in Paganism, from what is considered to be the start of the Modern Era, about 1500, which is when it also started being interested in the Druid, who is just the domestic brand of Noble Savage. All, of course-- Pagans, Druids, and Savages-- were often demonized during the Modern Era. Preceding them, in the Medieval Era, was the figure of the Wild Man, who was demonized then, but gradually was extended more and more sympathetic treatment, perhaps because a developing, urbanizing Europe was moving further from the Christian terror of wild Nature and its mythic inhabitants, which gained appeal in contrast to the discontents of civilization. The Witch, however, has only recently been accorded similar sympathy (Glinda of the Wizard of Oz!), because wild, natural women started fighting back and reclaiming the Witch and her paganism.

With Europe's voyages of exploration, starting as well at the start of the Modern era, many savage peoples were discovered around the world, who of course had to be converted to Christianity. And so the fear and hatred of heathen savages was extended toward them, and the legendary Wild Man of Europe was replaced by real wild men in out-landish places.

The first of these savages to be encountered were in the Americas. And England, the 'motherland' of our modern American culture, was competing with Spain and France for control of what came to be the United States and Canada, and though it was a close thing between England and France in the race for westward expansion across the North American continent, it was England, as well as her offspring the United States, who ended up the winners, and so the present (mainly) Anglophone nations, the U.S. and Canada, have a long history and heritage of the native peoples whose lands they ended up controlling. And this is important because it was in the U.S. and England that Neopaganism developed in the 1960s and 70s, and the Injun heritage was one stream of it though few now know of this, and it was ecological.

But in Northern Europe as well, there was interest in these and other savages, not just for colonial empire-building, but culturally, as a symbol. Particularly by the Romantic Era (from the late 1700s), the figure of the Noble Savage was a strong alternative ideal to that of Civilized Man. North American tribes and leaders that best fit this ideal became romanticized. Particularly as civilized man became more industrialized and urbanized, the icon of the simple, virtuous primitive, which had been around since Classical times-- that is, the earliest days of Western Civilization-- grew in its appeal as a Romantic 'Other'. Travelers, crusading journalists, and writers of literature in North America presented accounts of domestic Noble Savages, accurate, or valorizing, and especially in fiction, romanticized.

As a boy in the 1950s and 60s, I was heir to this heritage, mostly in children's literature and television programming, and later in movies and library books. And, as I have felt obliged to provide this introduction first, I will actually next time deliver the promised shtook on my experience of the Injun heritage. I will return to the Mythos before too long, I think, but first I need to work-up this Ecopagan matter I've been thinking about for a while. In the meanwhile, the Mythos material waits for you in the archives if you must not be deprived of it.

In Search of Ecopaganism 2

If I'm going to discuss Native American Paganism as a type of Neopaganism, I need to discuss terminology. 'Indian' is a misnomer that causes confusion-- that's out. And so 'American Indian' must go too. 'Native American' and 'indigenous people' are equally unwieldy, and I also dislike both for reasons that others might not. My choice is 'Injun', because it's brief, non-derogatory, of traditional usage, unconfusing, and could be seen as short for 'indigenous' rather than 'Indian'. Anyway, it's the best I can come up with, and I ask readers not to take offense at my using it.

My suggestion is that Injun religion is de facto, and should be recognized as, a major type of Neopaganism-- and not just in America- Germans have flocked to Lakota powwows as spiritual seekers, possibly due in part to Karl May's fin de siecle German novels, which were very popular with German boys. There seems to be some interest in Injuns across Europe. Injun spirituality is presently categorized as a form of Shamanism, which is unfair, since North American religions often involved far more than shamanistic features, if they could be called shamanic at all. And because the icon of the Noble Redskin loomed so large in America in the 1960s, the formative years of Neopaganism, and Injun spirituality has a large non-organized following of non-Injuns, it has a claim to be recognized as a major genre of Europic Neopaganism apart from Shamanism.

But the question arises-- 'Is it fair to call it Neopagan?' That's a complex and controversial question. But briefly, I would justify it because presently-existing Injun religion is 'neopagan' to the extent that, like European paleopaganism, strong attempts were made (by Christians) to stamp it out, and it has had to be revived by the Injun tribes, whose members often live 'off Rez' now in the modern world of the Europics, and no longer in their traditional lifeways. Which is also the case with the Europics who have sought to revive their traditional religions as Neopaganism. But from what I've read, Injuns generally do not want Europics to appropriate their culture, especially their religion. Their religion is for the tribe alone-- which is like the argument that only people of Celtic or Germanic ancestry should practice that type of Neopaganism. Though the case of Injuns is much stronger, since their culture, with its religion, was generally not stamped out as thoroughly or for as long as in the case of Europics-- it is still a living religion tradition with continuity, not a long-dead religion. And so it is cultural appropriation, I think, for non-Injuns to make free with their culture. But as someone who grew up with the 'Indian' as an important iconic figure of the American heritage and American mass culture, albeit in negative as well as positive forms, the clamor about cultural appropriation has suppressed an important influence for good in the American character. If there were a way to mediate this situation so that others could share more freely in the legacy of the Injuns, it would be a blessing. Perhaps the development of pan-Injun culture as seen in national powwows, for instance, and particularly among urban-acculturated Injuns, whose tribes may have lost much of their cultural heritage, or who are tribally-intermarried, or married to non-Injuns-- this is where pan-Injun religion might begin to be extended to non-Injuns (wannabes). But as Neopaganism? I don't know, but if it happens, many people might not like it but it would be something that must be acknowledged. After all, Neopaganism is still under the same onus as Injun religion was--"It's Pagan! Heathen!', 'It isn't a real religion!' But I think there is so much of value to everyone in elements of Injun spirituality and religion, that this inhibition of usage by non-Injuns is tragic. Not just for Americans, but everyone.

In the next shtook I'll discuss the importance of the Injun heritage as I experienced it as a boy in the Fifties and Sixties, through mass culture, and in my Sixties Countercultural teens, through reading and an encounter with real Injuns.

In Search of Ecopaganism

Recently, I got hold of a copy of Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, which I think must have given Neopaganism a big boost, probably in England as well as in North America. It came out in 1979, but I had the 1986 expanded edition, which added material on Gay Spirituality of the Neopagan Kind, and on Asatru, and otherwise tried to bring the story up to date. I had been through this book before, but had skipped over much of it as being of little interest to me. This time, however, I was taking notes, as I do now, and so was reading the parts I read, closely.

Adler, a journalist, starts out saying that in the early Seventies she got interested in finding alternative ecological religion, and in her search, she discovered the, at that time, largely unknown, nearly underground world of neopagan religion. But the only really ecological groups she found were Ferferia and the Church of All Worlds, and those are well-covered in the book, but the mass of it is about other neopagan expressions showing less or no apparent interest in Ecology. But that was, and still is, the reality in Neopaganism, just as Ecology (it was called just Environmentalism then) was merely one of many smorgasbord-choices in the Sixties Counterculture, out of which Neopaganism mostly sprang. Sure, increasingly since then you find ecological statements made in Neopagan books, generally either in the first or last sections, or even in a separate chapter, and books are often, in the title or cover-text, presented as ecological. But then you find the book itself to be not primarily about Ecology. And you look at the main types of Neopaganism-- Wicca, Celtic, Druidry, Northern, Shamanism*, and it's more or less the same. You get Ecology as an afterthought, as a selling-point, as an estimable issue to get behind-- if that. Even so, it's a sight better than you get in the traditional established world religions, for all I can tell.

Further: I found that there isn't an Ecopaganism page in Wikipedia, and I've looked up that and 'Eco-druidry', 'Eco-heathenism', etc., there and on Google, and it seems that what I get is usually a derogatory usage (these people see us coming!). So-- Eco-anything, apart from Eco-spirituality, granted, is just not a thing. Maybe it's that Ecology has been so often embraced, then set aside so that writer and readers can get to what really interests them, that it's like,"Sure, we're green-- isn't everybody? (yawn)". Or if a Neopagan group is truly ecologically-oriented, they just don't advertise it in their name-- like those 'tree-hugger' Druids you hear about, who are about as deep-green as you can get. And I don't name this blog-site 'Ecopaganism'-- maybe I would, except that the Shaggy Mythos, a pretty gnarly, peculiar product, cannot be representative of Ecopaganism in total. But if I could find an Ecopagan directory, I would want to get the Mythos on it. The advantage for me would be that I might discover my kind of people, who are Ecopagan, but not necessarily locked-into one of the standard categories-- as I am not-- despite my obsession with germanic vocabulary and interest in things germanic, I am not a Heathen.

Well, though I am baffled and chagrined by the absence of Ecopaganism from the roster of major Neopagan denominations, I still have hopes that it, or something like it, will come to the fore. If I knew what I could do to promote this, I would. If you know of any worthy ecopaganish persons, sites, or groups, I would appreciate hearing about it at shtrahler@yahoo.com. In the meanwhile, I'll see if a new search gets me any further than previous searches.

*I think that Native American spirituality is a de facto main type, though it's now classified as a subtype of Shamanisn, which I think is unfair. For more on this, see next shtook (post).